Redeemable
by Love Gordon
Summary: What if Voldemort was never defeated? What if Ginny Weasley was a Slytherin? What if Harry Potter had died that Halloween night in 1981? [Originally written for the HP_Fanfiction Birthday Challenge]
1. One: Redeemable

Redeemable 

_Premise: What if the Boy Who Lived had died? **[AU]**_

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**_Note – Sean, thanks for beta-reading this!_**__

            It was on her eighteenth birthday that she got the Dark Mark, as was the custom. The inner circle of Death Eaters took one new member per year, and she was this year's initiate.

            Draco, her best friend, who had been like an older brother to her since the Sorting Hat placed her in Slytherin, was last year's. He came to the Slytherin common room by Portkey, where he led her, blindfolded and giggling, into the portal of the fireplace. She knew him well enough to guess that he was smiling. She'd always been silly about important things.

            So she fervently hoped she looked all right for this, her initiation into the highest level of Voldemort's ever-growing movement of Death Eaters. Her dress robes were fine – Draco had given them to her for a Christmas present one year – if a little short. But she couldn't do much about her tall, skinny body or her lank, pale red hair. With a sigh, she stepped into the fireplace…

            Draco took off her blindfold after a few minutes of wandering, seemingly aimlessly, around a field. The grass crunched beneath her worn black boots. "It will go just fine," he murmured into her ear before he untied the blindfold. "Don't be frightened."

            It was, she thought, a place she had been to before. Night had fallen; the moon was high in the sky, and full. She was on a large plain, bordered by a circle of men and women. And, beyond them, there was a ring of stones. Great grey stones, stones that were older than most other things left in the realms of mortal men.

            She stared, wide-eyed, at the forty-or-so men and women that surrounded her. No, that wasn't right. More like forty-or-so men, she realized. She was the only girl.

            The tallest of the men, a handsome, dark-haired man who looked a little older than Draco's father, spoke first. "My dear," he began, his voice smooth but menacing, "I suppose you have noticed that you are our first- lady comrade. Forgive us if our welcome is, thus, a little less than polite society allows."

            She met his gaze without flinching, and his dark eyes' limitless depths seemed amused, if such a thing were possible. He smiled, and in that instant, she knew who he was.

            Voldemort.

            "_Crucio_," he said, but she refused to let him break her, the pain shooting through her body like a thousand knives. She stood straight, looking into his eyes without blinking. When she tasted blood in her mouth, she knew that she had bit her lip open, but she did not utter a sound.

            When he let go of the curse, she almost fell over, so great was the relief from the horrid, stabbing pain, but she caught herself in time. "Master," she said softly, but loudly enough that everyone could hear her, "Have I proved my self worthy with so easy a parlor trick?"

            "A parlor trick, you say." He savored the words. "And how?"

            "Practice. But I am always prepared."

            He threw half a dozen more curses at her, all of which she blocked without hesitation.

            "Very well, intrepid daughter. Are you sure you want this?" he asked.

            "With all my heart," Ginny Weasley replied, and she smiled as they burned the Mark into the pale skin of her arm.

**~*~**

            After the brief ceremony was over, some idiot gave her a small singing cake – Draco, she knew, because even with his hood up, he still smelled like the rain. Then He – somehow she could not think of Voldemort, her Master, as a mere "he" – separated them off into pairs with a gesture of his hand. Apparently, it was all procedure with them. He took her aside, though.

            "Weasley," her Master said in an unnervingly gentle undertone, "We all have- partners. You and your partner will, of course, know each other's identity, have means of contact, that sort thing, but those things can be revealed to _no one_ other than your partner. Understood?" She nodded. "I am aware you know some of your fellow comrades-"

            "Draco, yes-" Ginny affirmed.

            "-but from this day forth, you must never, ever refer to them as part of my flock. Forget that they are among my brethren. _Forget_."

            "Do you mean to pair me with him?" she asked, looking into his eyes. She was not the tallest of them, and surely even the shortest could do so, but somehow she got the idea that they avoided such a thing at all costs. Vaguely, she wondered why… they were beautiful eyes… 

            He broke the gaze. "You, Weasley… I had thought to pair you with him- such as I usually do… but you are a surprise. Gryffindor and Slytherin are not so very different, are they?"

            "I'm not a Gryffindor!" she protested. "I never wanted to be like Percy or Bill…"

            "And that is why you are here, at night, among the forty-seven most wanted murderers of Mudblood folk?" She was silent. "I thought so. You will be very interesting to observe."

            "Is that a threat?" Ginny asked. Her Master said nothing, simply seizing her by the wrist and propelling her to a lone dark form that stood a good distance off from the others.

            "_Here_," He said to the man, spitting out the greeting like it was a curse. "Your new partner."

            And Ginny was left alone with a man in a black hooded cape.

~*~

            "Hello," she greeted the man, feeling very gawky, tall, and awkward in her three-year-old, too short dress robes. "I don't suppose you'd like to play storyteller?"

            Her new partner (who was perhaps an inch taller than she was, but still gave her the feeling of being looked down upon) snorted. "Not at the moment, Miss Weasley." 

            "Eek," said Ginny, but in a low tone, as she was quite sure that the great Voldemort would find no problem with eliminating a scrawny string bean of a girl who shrieked like a peacock. "Er, hello, Professor Snape." And, because she couldn't think of anything else: "Is there something that we ought to be taking care of?"

            "Yes, in fact," Professor Snape said brusquely, which only served to make her feel more mortified. "1040 Lewis Boulevard, Stratford-Upon-Avon."

            "Shall I Apparate?"

            "Most promptly." With that, he Disapparated, and she followed.

            "You kill them," he hissed, upon her arrival in the shadows beneath the trees that overhung Lewis Boulevard. "I'll keep lookout."

            It was an ordinary house, she realized, only an ordinary little two-story white cottage. Ivy covered the walls and part of the roof; a large rose bush stood outside the front door. A broom – a Nimbus 3200, she thought, from the look of it – leaned against the porch railing, giving the porch a homey look. The absolutely normality of it unnerved her.

            She freed her wand from a pocket in the depths of her robes, ignoring the fluttery, aching feeling her stomach was giving her, and entered the house, warding herself with murmured spells and curses.

            They never knew what hit them. Ginny screamed "_Avada Kedavra_!" twice in quick succession, and first the man, then the woman, slid down in their chairs surrounding the fire. There were blank looks of surprise on their faces. Upstairs a baby began to wail.

            "Mama! Mama!" it cried.

            "Oh," she said, "Oh…" And suddenly her knees, so rigid and strong underneath the burden of the Cruciatus Curse, were jelly. She barely made it to the rose bush before she threw up.

            Strong arms caught her and held in those terrible, interminable minutes when she lost most of her dinner and all of her bravado. She lay in their warm embrace gasping for a few minutes afterwards, and then she cried.

            "Hush," said her protector, "We've got to get out of here."

~*~

            Ginny awoke in the glow of lamplight sometime later, and she realized, with a jolt of momentary horror, that she was in the Potions office. Then she remembered the events of the night before, and cried out before she could stop herself.

            "They don't know," he said quietly, rising out of the wooden chair behind his desk. "Not Voldemort, nor your fellow students."

            "Professor," she asked, with a distinct note of horror in her voice, "Have I gone mad?"

            "You understand, then, why there are no female Death Eaters in Voldemort's circle," Snape replied drily. "My former partner was the first… she killed herself on our last mission. She went insane."

            "Anita Lestrange?"

            "Precisely." The Potions master abruptly stood up and walked over to where she lay, in a large armchair facing the fireplace. "Will you do the same, Miss Weasley?"

            "Will you, Professor?" She looked up at him, certain that she had not imagined the earnestness in his voice. "Is there no other way to leave?"

            "No. None that I have ever found."

            "Then," she said dully, "I suppose that will be my way out. I lied to Voldemort, you know. I told him that I wasn't a Gryffindor."

            "Do you think all Gryffindors have qualms about killing?" Snape questioned her. "All Slytherins possess none? Why did the Sorting Hat put you in Slytherin?"

            Ginny sighed. "Because I put it on, and asked it to make me different from my brothers. Better. Perhaps it took me too literally."

            "The Sorting Hat knows its business. You're clever, aren't you? Ambitious, determined, any means to an end… I can offer you a better end."

            "What? Betrayal?" She laughed bitterly. "And how would that help me? I would be dead, just the same."

            Snape rested a hand on her shoulder. "A man once gave me a chance, when I, too, had tired of the killing. He offered me a role in his plans… it's a game of duplicity, a dangerous way to live. Would you be willing?"

            "A double agent?" Tentatively, she tested the words. "Don't think such a thing could make you, or I, redeemable…"

            "Nor do I," he replied with a grim, ironic smile. "But we can try."

_END_


	2. Two: Prophecy

**Two: Prophecy**

_~Five Years Later~ _

It was shortly after dinner, on the night before her second year of teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts began, and Ginny Weasley tiredly pored over her notes for the final time, yawning ever so quietly.

She wasn't aware of the owl's presence until it dropped a letter on her desk. Gently, she petted the mail-carrying bird, offered it a treat, and observed dispassionately that her hands were shaking, from overwork and the faint burning of the Dark Mark on her right arm. It was a warning, she thought.

A short perusal of the note confirmed her suspicions; Ginny quickly got up, breathed deeply in an attempt to dispel the cloud of fatigue that had settled over, and left the room.

The stairs leading to the Hogwarts dungeons were many, if not terribly steep, and she stopped several times to emit a racking cough or two. It was close to fifteen minutes before her trembling white hands pushed open the door to the Potions classroom. She was surprised to find another man in the room, a man about her height with shaggy unkempt black hair. He looked about the same age as Snape – with whom he was bickering. 

"Don't think I don't know what I'm doing, Black," her fellow teacher and partner had been saying. "She'll be better off-"

The man called Black had spun around sharply when he heard the creak of the door.

Timidly, she said, "You owled, Professor?"

"Ah, Miss Weasley," Snape said with a barely detectable air of relief. "Do come in." Once Ginny had seated herself atop one of the classroom's several black marble-topped tables, Snape continued, "This is Sirius Black. He's here about the guest I currently have in my office." 

She raised her eyebrows, but offered no comment.

"The guest he's currently harbouring," Black said softly, "Is here illegally, with neither the consent nor the knowledge of the Ministry of Magic."

"Would it soothe her parents to know how she came here? Or from whence she came?" Snape said in that smooth tone of his that brought to mind the image of a crouching tiger, ready to pounce.

Black sighed, and Ginny realized that this was a man who had been defeated in his heart before he'd even stepped into the dank Potions dungeon. A man who played to lose. She spoke up then. "Who _are_ you, Sirius Black, that you have the right to question Professor Snape about his visitors?" She said this lightly, but her nails bit into the soft skin of her palms as she clenched her fists.

"An Auror, once," he replied off-handedly, "A man who has loved – and lost." With the last two words, he glared at Snape, and Ginny was surprised to see the Potions master flinch.

"Black, you would do best to let dead dogs lie," Snape muttered.

"Dogs, eh? Interesting choice of words you make. Very interesting indeed. She wasn't some _dog_, Snape; you'd do well to remember that. _I'm_ the only canine here, and I'm not dead yet!"

With that, Black stomped out the door, leaving Ginny opened-mouthed and speechless. After a few moments, she hopped up from her seat and spun around to face Snape.

"What the _hell_ is going on?" she demanded.

"We have a situation," he enigmatically informed her, "Several, in fact."

"Argh!" Ginny threw her hands up in the air. "This is not the time for enigmas! _Tell me_."

"You are no longer a student here, Miss Weasley. You're not entitled to temper tantrums."

"_Severus_…" she said, her voice deadly quiet.

"I told you _not_ to call me that!"

She ignored him. "This is not a temper tantrum. If I were having a temper tantrum, something in your lab would have exploded by now."

"The problems centre around our guest, and Professor Trelawney," he said, oblivious to her statement.

"Sibyll? Surely she's not… part of the Circle?"

He paused a moment before answering. "No… Did you ever hear about her prophecy? The _real_ one?"

Ginny stifled a snicker. "No, but surely that's a joke. Sibyll couldn't tell a prophecy from a teacup if her life depended on it!"

"True. But once, in her final year at Hogwarts, Grindelwald was defeated. One day, shortly after, she fell into a trance and predicted the demise of the next great Dark wizard at the hands of two individuals. It was all very hushed up, of course…"

"No one wanted another Dark wizard to rise up," she finished. "Hmm. So, what was the prophecy?"

With a quick, efficient motion, Snape removed a small roll of parchment from the folds of his robes. He cleared his throat. " 'The Dark Lord cometh again, in the guise of Serpentine Death, and his Demise be an Impossibility, lest he be slain by the Gryffindor's Lion or a Grandmother of Rome.' The Gospel, according to Sibyll," he added, rather irreverently, as he rolled up the parchment again and replaced it in his robes. "To the best of my knowledge, we have the Grandmother of Rome in my office."

"That's all well and good," Ginny said, perching on one of the tables again. "But what's this about Gryffindor's Lion? And why on earth was that deranged, jilted ex-Auror just in here?"

Snape sighed, looking extremely discomfited – something quite unusual for him. "Sirius Black has a… personal interest in the prophecy. Several other prophecies – most notably, Cassandra's last and one of Vlatbinsky's – pointed to a certain boy, one Harry Potter, as being Gryffindor's Lion. I tried to take steps to protect him… but Albus, who was Headmaster here then, didn't get word in time. Peter Pettigrew, a friend of the Potters, betrayed their hiding place to Voldemort… they took him to Azkaban. I still remember the site of him crowing over his victory in the ashes of their house. The Potter boy's parents were also Sirius's best friends, save Pettigrew and a Remus Lupin."

"He loved this Potter woman."

"Her name was Lily," Snape said, looking up at one of the flicking candles in the sconces around the room. Not for the first time, Ginny wondered just how well she knew him.

"And you loved her as well?" She waited for his reaction, but he just sat there, staring into the candlelight.

When he spoke, his voice was so quiet she barely heard him.

"I thought I did."

**~*~**

She left him there, still staring at the light fixture, and she went into his office.

Her eyes were greeted with the surprising sight of Rhea Forrest, one of her soon-to-be seventh year students. The girl was wrapped up in a worn wool blanket, and she had curled up in front of the fire on Snape's hearthrug. Her long, chestnut brown hair, usually sleek and silky, was matted and tangled beyond the limits of most Detangling Charms.

But what frightened Ginny the most were the bruises and cuts that covered the only exposed parts of Rhea's body visible from where she stood: the girl's hands. She approached the sleeping girl and gently brushed the brown mess of hair back from her face, which had fared no better. It, too, had its fair share of bruises, and sported a long, vicious-looking welt on its left cheek.

"Oh, _Rhea_," she gasped.

"I had not meant for you to find out like this," said Snape, who had come up behind her.

"What's wrong with her?" she asked without turning around.

"Dreamless Sleep potion," he replied, "That, and prolonged exposure to a Malfoy."

"Surely not – _Draco_!"

"No. She's been Lucius'() new toy… and Voldemort's."

"How come we didn't know about this?" Ginny hissed.

"I'm not sure," he murmured. "Lucius has always been closed to him, after the Lestranges… and Lucius has been known to throw private – parties, shall we say? She's Mad-Eye Moody's granddaughter, and she's been missing two months. He must have been very- fond of her." She covered her mouth with her hand, and he took her free one in his. "Miss Weasley, you're shaking." All she could do was shiver. "Wait a moment."

Letting go of her hand, he turned away, towards the shelves that lined the wall behind him, and then commenced a total search of them. Finally, he selected a petite green bottle from one of the middle shelves and handed it to her.

"Shall I drink it?" she asked, and he nodded.

"You ought to take better care of yourself, you know," he rebuked, but Ginny decided to let it slide.

Gingerly, she lifted the tiny vessel to her lips and drank. Almost immediately, she felt a strange cool flood her body; her fatigue seemed bearable, if not completely gone, and her hands ceased their tremors. However, she still walked over to the armchair by the fireplace with caution, sat down, and sank into its cushions. "Thanks…" With the back of her hand, she rubbed her eyes. Then she glanced to the still form at her left. "What _did_ they do to her?"

"I'm not sure. Everything and anything, I suppose."

"Does she know where she is? What she is?"

Snape sighed wearily. "I'm not sure. She was fairly lucid on the way back from the Malfoys - I got her out with the help of one of the houselves, Dobby, the night I found out she was there – but that's two days ago, now, and the only time when she's regained consciousness was when she awoke from her nightmares. It got so bad that I had to give her the Dreamless Sleep, there simply wasn't any other option… She certainly has no idea that she's a Grandmother of Rome."

"How did _you_ find out?" she asked, closing her eyes and feeling the warmth of the fire on her cheeks.

"Albus has… well, he's asked us to sponsor another agent."

She opened her eyes wide and sat straight up in the chair. "Another one."

"Yes," Snape, who had taken a seat behind his desk, replied, "Another one."

"Shouldn't you have asked me first?" she inquired, barely holding back the string of curses and epithets she was ready to unleash on him. 

"You were still in the hospital then, and it's not as if you should be out of bed even now."

"It was not my fault!" Ginny protested, slumping back into the comforting encirclement of the armchair. "Don't act like it was, either. I'll be well soon enough."

"I'm not blaming you, Miss Weasley; it was merely unfortunate. However, wandering about Hogwarts when you've gone at least a night without sleep is not exactly an auspicious start for your convalescence."

It had been a particularly virulent strain of magical pneumonia that attacked her; she had only just survived the experience, spending two weeks in St. Mungo's. She was, by this time, more than a little tired of people telling her to stay in bed. Then again, her entire partnership with Sev- no, she reminded herself, Snape – was possible only because of her ability to shut up and ignore whatever he was saying…

"So who is this other agent, and how on earth did she figure out Rhea was a Grandmother of Rome?" Ginny asked.

Snape smiled a very spiteful smile. "She is our new Transfiguration teacher, Professor Granger… does that answer your question?"

_I have decided to continue this story, possibly for six-seven chapters, maybe longer. Thanks to my reviewers – kaila, Jenni, and tabula rasa at ffn; Liss, Plu, Luinthoron, Karen, Athene, Trinity, Jillian, and Luthien at 7Q; Natasya Serenskaya at Schnoogle; and yael and Amber ? at HP_Fanfiction._

_The next chapter will probably, though not definitely, be delayed a few weeks – I'm working on the final chapter of Harry Potter and the Amulet of Houle, my novel-length._


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